http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-deibert/florida-oil-drilling-_b_990183.html

by Michael Deibert

Posted: 10/4/11 12:44 PM ET

The news that the Spanish oil giant, Repsol, intends to begin exploratory drilling in the waters directly north of Cuba, has set off a chorus of criticism in Cuba’s neighbor to the north: the United States.

Repsol, which has a presence in more than 35 countries, has announced that an immense, semi-submersible oil rig constructed by the Italian company Saipem, is currently speeding its way from Singapore to the Florida Straits between Key West and Cuba, with a goal of beginning exploratory drilling sometime in December.

With analysts believing that Cuba’s coastal waters may contain up to 20 billion barrels of oil, Repsol — which also drilled offshore in Cuba in 2004 — is set to partner with Norway’s Statoil and India’s ONGC in the drilling of a pair of wells as per an agreement with the Cuban government.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, with memories throughout the region still fresh with images of the April 2010 explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf Of Mexico, there has been an outcry at Repsol’s plans.

The Deepwater Horizon incident killed 11 workers and loosed a gusher of oil that leaked an estimated 53,000 barrels a day into the Gulf for three months, fouling beaches in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and killing fish and wildlife.

Following a 17-month investigation, a report last month on the disaster issued by the the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement leveled withering criticism at well owner and operator BP, rig owner Transocean Ltd. and cementing operator Halliburton Co.

“From the Deepwater Horizon incident, we have seen clearly that deepwater offshore drilling is inherently risky,” says Dr. Susan D. Shaw, director of the Maine-based Marine Environmental Research Institute. “Even in U.S. waters with the resources, infrastructure and equipment that we have, we watched a massive failure on many counts.”

In a rare moment of bipartisanship in the rancorous U.S. political landscape, a Sept. 28 letter to Repsol by 34 members of the U.S. Congress — including the Cuban-born Republican chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Florida Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz — wrote that the “oil drilling scheme endangers the environment, and enriches the Cuban tyranny” and urged the company to “walk away from the project.”

The U.S. maintains a trade embargo with Cuba, and Cuban-Americans make up a powerful voting bloc in the state of Florida, which counts for 27 electoral votes in the U.S.’s electoral college system.

Political considerations aside, however, it is the patch of sea where Repsol proposes to work that has caused the most concern.

The location of the proposed drilling is only 65 miles from the Marquesas Keys, an uninhabited group of islands near Key West, in an area of strong 4-6 mile per hour currents that come from the Gulf of Mexico, shoot through the Florida Straits and then churn northwards up the Atlantic Coast of the continental U.S.

A wide swath of protected areas could be threatened, including the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary — which spans some 2,800-square-nautical-miles and includes important repositories of coral reefs, seagrass and 1,600 miles of mangrove shoreline — and Biscayne National Park, an area that contains the beginning of the third-largest coral reef in the world and mangrove areas along its shore. The million-plus acre Everglades National Park — a subtropical wilderness that has famously been described as a “river of grass” — is also nearby.

“It’s such an ecologically rich area that any oil in the marine environment could seriously impact the entire ecosystem,” asserts Daniel O. Suman, professor of marine affairs and policy at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.

Repsol’s safety record could best be described as mixed.

In February 2008, a spill by the company let free an estimated 100 barrels of crude near the 2.4 million-acre Yasuni National Park in Ecuador. The park, home to populations of jaguars, harpy eagles and other fauna, is also the ancestral home of the Huaorani people, the region’s native inhabitants. This was followed by another spill in Ecuador in February 2009. In December 2010, a Repsol petrol platform in Nigeria’s Ebro Delta region spilled 180,000 litres of crude into the ocean off that country’s coast.

On its website, Repsol — which did not respond to requests for comment — states that the drilling equipment to be used “complies with all the technical requirements and all the limitations established by the US administration for drilling operations in Cuba.”

Residents of the Florida Keys — one of the more beguiling corners of the United States with its vistas of blue-green ocean water and endless sky — remain apprehensive.

“We’re very concerned,” says Key West mayor Craig Cates. “And because of the embargo (with Cuba) we can’t even send any equipment over if anything starts leaking. We just have to wait until it gets into our waters. ”

This article was first published in slightly different form in collaboration with Panos Caribbean.

http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2011/10/presidential_gulf_coast_task_f.html

I’m glad to see this process moving along. The reduction in nutrient run-off is an excellent strategy for improving Gulf water quality. DV

Published: Wednesday, October 05, 2011, 8:30 AM Updated: Wednesday, October 05, 2011, 12:17 PM
The Times-Picayune By Mark Schleifstein

The federal-state Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force today released a wide-ranging list of strategies for repairing damage done to Gulf of Mexico ecosystems by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and by other long-term threats. The main report contains mostly policy-level recommendations, leaving more specific prescriptions to an appendix of existing and proposed projects recommended by each of the five states bordering the Gulf.

However, Louisiana’s appendix page is not included. State officials expected it to be released on Friday.

The report endorses using the majority of Clean Water Act fine money resulting from the oil spill, which could be as much as $5 billion to $20 billion, for Gulf recovery efforts, in addition to current funding for such projects.

“This strategy is designed to prepare the region for transitioning from a response to the spill into a long-term recovery that supports the vital ecosystem and the people who depend on it,” said Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, chairwoman of the task force.

“The health of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem starts and ends with its people and its communities,” she said. “The individuals and families who visit the Gulf, who work in the region, who depend on its resources, and especially those who call it home, know its needs and challenges best. They will be integral to creating and executing this long-term strategy.

State officials are happy with the report’s key points, especially language calling for the Army Corps of Engineers to increase the amount of sediment dredged from the Mississippi River that is used to rebuild wetlands, speeding the process for approving and building restoration projects, and elevating restoration goals to the same importance as navigation and flood control in decisionmaking by the corps and other agencies, all of which they’ve requested from federal officials for several years.

“The Task Force’s draft strategy identifies fundamental obstacles that have plagued restoration and protection efforts in Louisiana and other states for decades. The report attempts to begin reversing 80 years of mismanagement,” said Garret Graves, senior coastal advisor to Gov. Bobby Jindal and co-chairman of the task force.

But Graves said he was disappointed that the report didn’t recommend more specific projects and goals, such as requiring the corps to use 50 percent of dredged material for restoration projects, and instead delays such recommendations for inclusion in a second task force report.

“We took a year to write a report that recommends another report,” he said. “I would rather be in a position where we are advancing as much as we can now.

“We’re going to continue working through this task force process through the public comment period (on the draft report) to try to add more specificity and more tangible actions to the report,” he said.

Jackson said elevating Gulf restoration efforts that address ecosystem impacts on coastal residents and the coastal economy to national prominence is the key accomplishment of the new report.

“Providing (restoration) an equal footing with navigation and flood damage risk reduction is a very important goal and it hasn’t been said before by all five states together,” she said. “Having the Gulf speak, as (New Orleans Women of the Storm leader) Ann Milling said, together with one voice is powerful.”

The task force adopted four broad goals for its strategy:

Restore and conserve habitat, including wetlands, coastal prairies and forests, estuaries, seagrass beds, natural beaches, dunes and barrier islands.
Restore water quality, in particular reducing the excess nutrients flowing down the Mississippi River system that create an annual low-oxygen “dead zone” covering an average 6,700 square miles along the coasts of Louisiana and Texas.
Replenish and protect living coastal and marine resources, including depleted populations of fish and wildlife species and their degraded habitats.
Enhance community resilience to a variety of threats, including storm risk, sea-level rise, land loss, natural-resource depletion and compromised water quality.

To accomplish those goals, the task force said it will rely largely on voluntary programs and increased cooperation among coastal states and their inland neighbors, and between the states and the federal agencies that enforce natural resource laws.

It also will work with several regional organizations, including the Gulf of Mexico Alliance, a regional partnership that includes the governors of Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi and Texas; the federal-state Hypoxia Task Force, created to reduce nutrient flow into the Mississippi River; the federal-state Natural Resource Damage Assessment Trustee Council, formed under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 to deal with environmental threats from the oil spill; and the National Ocean Council, established by President Obama to address broad, environmental ocean policies.

“The mission of the task force was not to develop another ‘new’ plan,” the report said. “Rather, the task force set out to build on existing work, learn from those who are actively involved in ecosystem restoration, and craft an agenda that would provide unified and strategic direction for restoration activities across the Gulf.”

The task force acknowledged that the national economic downturn presents challenges for restoration.

“In this time of severe fiscal constraint across all levels of government, task force member agencies are committed to finding common ground, establishing priorities, and working together to achieve them,” the report said. “This may involve reassessing budgets and agency activities to collaboratively align resources to the highest priority Gulf Coast restoration work.”

Jackson said significant cost savings will result from coordination of restoration projects, including permitting, regulation and administrative functions, among the five states and 11 federal agencies on the task force.

Equally important, however, will be reserving a significant portion of any oil spill fine money for those restoration efforts, she said.

Within six months of the approval of the draft strategy, the task force will move to develop more specific short-term, medium-term and long-term tasks aimed at implementing its goals. In creating the task force, Obama said it would remain in place until Congress approved a similar body, but there’s been no move by Congress to do so.

To meet its habitat restoration and conservation goal, the task force will put “river management” — the use of the sediment and water resources of the Mississippi and other Gulf Coast rivers — on par with navigation and flood damage risk reduction priorities in federal and state decision-making.

That would mean working to maximize the use of river sediment for coastal restoration.

It also would find ways to increase the use of “dedicated dredging,” such as that being used in Louisiana to build wetlands with material piped from the river, through the use of permanent pipelines dedicated to restoration work.

The task force also would assist in expediting construction of river diversions that already have been authorized, planned and designed. Several such projects are awaiting financing in Louisiana.

The strategy also endorses Mississippi River hydrodynamic and delta management studies just announced by the corps and Louisiana, which are designed to help define the future of the lower river’s wetlands and determine how best to use the river’s water and sediment.

The report said coastal communities have relied on flood protection levees and navigation structures that “created unintended consequences … by accelerating wetland and barrier island erosion and restricting the flow of vital sediments that had sustained the ecosystem over time.”

In Louisiana, the combination of river and hurricane levees with navigation channels and oil and gas canals has played a large part in the state’s loss of 1,883 square miles of coastal land from 1932 to 2010, the report said.

The task force recommends the expansion of conservation areas to ensure a landscape that supports both the Gulf ecosystem and the human economy.

Included in that strategy would be collaboration between federal, state, local and private organizations to form habitat corridors for key species. Targeted resources would include seagrasses, mangroves, coastal forests and marshes, and they could be protected by buffer zones.

To address the dead zone and other water-quality issues, the task force recommends a variety of measures aimed at reducing the use of nutrients by farmers upriver and capturing nutrient runoff. It also endorses the Hypoxia Task Force goal of reducing the average size of the dead zone to less than 1,931 square miles, or less than a third of the present average.

The report relies largely on voluntary measures to meet that goal. But it also suggests that states adopt regulations limiting the amount of phosphorus contained in lawn fertilizer used in urban areas, a strategy already adopted in states bordering the Chesapeake Bay.

While a recent National Research Council report found that new federal financial support for development of biofuels has resulted in the reuse of marginal farmland in the Midwest to grow corn and other crops, which has increased nutrients in the Mississippi, Jackson said she doesn’t expect to see a reduction in that support.

“I don’t think you’re going to see anyone asking the Midwest give up on a new economic growth engine,” she said. “That would be like asking the Gulf to give up on energy production.”

Instead, Jackson said the report’s emphasis on methods of reducing the use of fertilizers and projects to capture nutrients before they enter the Mississippi will eventually meet the dead zone reduction goal.

To restore depleted fisheries and wildlife populations, the report recommends revising fishery management plans and better enforcing them.

As part of that effort, it recommends creating data collection programs independent of the existing system of relying on commercial and recreational fishery landings.

“The lack of data is frequently cited as a major challenge in achieving sustainability and maximizing economic benefits to recreational and commercial fisheries,” the report said.

The report also recommended looking at ways to reintroduce species in areas with depleted populations, including the use of aquaculture to restock native species.

For offshore areas, the report recommends better protection of key habitat areas, including coral reefs, sea grass beds and Sargassum seaweed patches. In some areas, oyster and coral reefs would be recreated, restored or enhanced, and artificial reefs could also be incorporated.

So-called “sentinel” species and sites — such as Atlantic bluefin tuna and their spawning grounds, and important deepwater coral reefs — would be identified and studied, the report said.

The task force also recommended a greater emphasis on controlling a variety of invasive species that threaten native species, including nutria, lionfish, giant salvinia, Asian tiger shrimp and several species of tilapia.

Public comments on the report are being accepted until midnight eastern time on Oct. 26. Comments can be submitted on the web at http://www.epa.gov/gulfcoasttaskforce/, by e-mail at oei.docket@epa.gov, by fax at (202) 566-9744, or can be mailed to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Docket Center; Office of Environmental Information Docket, Mail Code 28221T; 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW; Washington, DC 20460.

http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/article1193341.ece

TampaBay.com
In Print: Sunday, September 25, 2011

The federal government has moved remarkably fast in the year since the BP oil spill to make offshore drilling safer. The new requirements for training and equipment will better enable crews to avoid a disaster and to respond if one occurs. And the government has rounded out this new commitment to safety with an aggressive effort to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. But there is work still ahead to raise industry standards and restore the gulf’s ecosystem and economy. The White House and Congress need to keep the reforms and recovery a national priority.

The blown-out Macondo well was permanently sealed one year ago last week, and officials marked the anniversary with a flurry of reports on how far the government and industry have come since the worst oil spill in U.S. history. The short answer is far, but not far enough. A joint investigation by the Coast Guard and the federal agency that oversees offshore drilling faulted all three main companies involved at Macondo with violating federal safety regulations in the run-up to the April 20, 2010, disaster. Officials blamed a lack of training and attention for “a series of decisions that increased risk,” ultimately resulting in a blowout that spewed more than 200 million gallons of oil into the gulf.

While the report echoes the findings of earlier investigations, it provides a solid baseline for the government as it apportions blame and financial penalties and examines whether to charge the companies criminally. And it underscores again the divide between the regulatory structure that exists on paper and what is practiced on the offshore rigs.

It is worth remembering that the principal players at Macondo are also industry leaders. BP, which owned the lease, holds more active leases in the gulf than any other company. Transocean, which owned the Deepwater Horizon rig, is the world’s largest offshore drilling contractor. And Halliburton, hired to cement the Macondo well, is a leading oil services provider. Washington must hold the biggest players to the highest standards if it hopes to change the safety culture across the industry.

That requires the government to step up its game, too. New rules imposed since the disaster have strengthened everything from well design and emergency training to workplace safety and corporate accountability. This month, the government held its first surprise drill to test the sub-sea containment capabilities of a deepwater well. On Saturday, the offshore regulatory agency splits into two new branches, one focused on safety and spill response and the other focused on managing offshore energy development. The move will sharpen the government’s focus; already, the new agencies have hired 122 new engineers and other specialists to bring more technical skill to the oversight process.

The administration needs to build on these improvements and challenge any complaints by Congress or the industry that the reforms are killing the oil sector. If anything, the new permitting guidelines have simplified the process for the oil companies. Since the new safety rules took effect, regulators have approved 180 permits for deepwater wells; only 25 applications are pending.

Congress can help by directing that 80 percent of any fines from the BP spill be directed toward cleaning up the gulf; a Senate committee advanced that effort by passing the bill Wednesday. The federal government and the states also need to ensure that those harmed by the spill are fairly compensated by BP and the other responsible parties. The progress over the past year has been a good start, but the safety and recovery effort will require a sustained commitment.

[Last modified: Sep 23, 2011 07:03 PM]

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Copyright 2011 St. Petersburg Times

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/09/23/cuba-set-to-begin-offshore-drilling-is-florida-in-eco-straits/

Time

Posted by TIM PADGETT
Friday, September 23, 2011 at 3:58 pm

The Cuban and Chinese national flags fly next to each other at an oil rig of the Great Wall Drilling Company, a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), near Varadero, around 140 kilometres (86 miles) east of Havana, September 4, 2011. (Desmond Boylan-Reuters)

Like the tourism-dependent state of Florida, the tourism-dependent nation of Cuba 90 miles away can’t afford to foul its picturesque coastline with an oil spill. But unlike Florida, which has long resisted the temptation of lucrative offshore drilling, Cuba is broke. And because it’s now hearing the seductive call of as much as 20 billion barrels of crude sitting beneath the ocean just miles from Havana, the communist island is poised to begin drilling in those waters before the end of the year.

According to a map of the 43,000-sq-mile (112,00-sq-km) drilling area, some of that activity could take place as close as 45 miles from the Florida Keys and the precious coral reefs and marine sanctuaries that line them. Understandably, that’s got folks in Florida, who to say the least aren’t politically chummy with the Castro regime, environmentally fretful now as well. Which is why a delegation of U.S. and international environmentalists and drilling experts visited Cuba this month to discuss safeguards against a BP-style spill choking the Florida Straits. Fortunately, says Dan Whittle, a senior attorney for the New York-based Environmental Defense Fund, “the Cubans seem very motivated to do [the drilling] right. They understand an accident would only set back their plans and put their foreign partners under pressure to hold off investing.”

Still, Whittle notes, one has to contrast Cuba’s good intentions with its threadbare technology, infrastructure and means – including the lack of a bona fide oil spill clean-up fund. (The U.S. maintains a $1 billion clean-up reserve.) Cuba, which produces about 50,000 barrels of oil per day inland, is having to rely on foreign petro-firms to do the costlier and more complicated maritime extraction. Companies like Spain’s Repsol – which is currently sending a massive ocean rig from Singapore to the Florida Straits and is slated to begin drilling after the hurricane season ends Dec. 1 – have the burden of bringing their own equipment and know-how to fill the Cuban void. And because of Washington’s 49-year-old trade embargo against Cuba, they can’t acquire spare parts next door in the U.S.

The question, then, is whether Washington will at least grant those firms access to U.S. spill prevention and clean-up hardware and services. The Obama Administration has said it will let U.S. companies do business with Cuba’s foreign partners in that context on a case-by-case basis. U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami, an ardent embargo supporter who represents the Keys and chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, tells TIME that “should a disaster occur and Florida’s waters be threatened, U.S. regulations could allow U.S. oil spill mitigation companies to engage in clean-up activities.”

But Whittle and other delegation members like William Reilly, a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator and co-chairman of the White House task force that investigated last year’s disastrous BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, are urging that the doors to cooperation be as open as possible, not just in response to spills but beforehand – when, for example, a foreign firm drilling off Cuba is in a hurry to replace something like a blowout preventer, the equipment whose failure led to the BP spill. “We feel it’s a no-brainer for the U.S.,” says Whittle. “It doesn’t really strengthen Cuba’s hand” in terms of actual oil drilling, “but it does strengthen everyone’s hand in terms of being prepared for emergencies.”

The estimates of Cuba’s offshore oil reserves range from 5 billion barrels to 20 billion (the latter being the Cuban government’s calculation). But it’s uncertain if Havana will be able to interest firms in exploring all 59 maritime fields it has designated off its north coast. Repsol, Statoil of Norway and ONGC of India will get the drills diving in six fields near Havana, while five other firms, including Petrobras of Brazil, have signed up for about 20 others. (China’s state-run CNPC is still negotiating concessions in five.) And even if a spill were to occur, the local currents would likely carry any slick east before it could reach the Keys – although Whittle warns “there is a lot of unpredictability in that area so the Keys have ample reason to be concerned.” Florida’s Atlantic coast could be vulnerable as well. But the more certain eco-damage, environmentalists note, would be to the beach resorts and coral reefs off Cuba’s north coast.

That fact – and the just as salient reality that Cuba’s $2 billion-a-year tourism industry is one of its its main economic engines – should give Cuba every reason to be extra vigilant about accidents. Florida leaders like Ros-Lehtinen and U.S. Senator Bill Nelson insist the best way to avoid them is get Cuba to scrap its offshore drilling plans altogether. But that’s unrealistic. For one, thanks to a combination of mismanagement and the embargo, Cuba’s economy is already so dilapidated that President Raúl Castro is having to lay off a million state workers, and he desperately needs the oil windfall. And while leftist Venezuelan President and staunch ally Hugo Chávez sends some 120,000 barrels of oil each day to Cuba on very favorable financing terms, questions surrounding Chávez’s health (he was diagnosed this past summer with cancer) and his re-election prospects next year have made the Cubans all the more determined to be more energy self-sufficient.

As a result, this is one offshore drilling venture Florida can’t control. What it can help ensure, however, is that it’s a safe one.

Special thanks to Richard Charter.

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2011/09/gulf_oil_spill_investigators_s_1.html

Looks like Chevron bought out the Interior chair. There should be a prohibition that anyone leaving government work on a specific industry–such as oil–is banned from going to work for them for a period of years. DV

Times-Picayune

Published: Thursday, September 22, 2011, 9:17 PM Updated: Thursday, September 22, 2011, 9:39 PM
By David Hammer, The Times-Picayune

A U.S. House committee was forced to postpone a hearing on the findings of a federal investigation into the causes of the BP oil spill because the Obama administration suddenly refused to let investigators testify, the committee chairman said.

The alleged silencing of the members of the joint Coast Guard and Interior Department investigative team comes in the wake of the sudden resignation of Interior’s lead investigator, Hammond resident David Dykes.

In a news release late Thursday afternoon, Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, blasted the Obama administration.

“It took far too long for the final report to be issued and the Obama administration is now further delaying proper oversight by suddenly refusing to allow members of the investigation team to testify,” Hastings said in a statement.

Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement and the Coast Guard said they never wanted “line investigators” to testify. They are seeking to clarify that with Hastings at a meeting Friday, apparently to offer more senior agency officials to testify.

“BOEMRE and the Coast Guard were responsive to Chairman Hastings and his Committee’s request late last week for a hearing. However, we felt strongly from the beginning it was inappropriate for BOEMRE and Coast Guard line investigators to testify, and presented alternative options,” a joint statement from the two agencies said.

Before the final investigative report bearing his name was released, Dykes resigned after 12 years at BOEMRE and its predecessor agency, the Minerals Management Service. He went to work for Chevron Corp.

His investigative team oversaw the most comprehensive probe into what happened April 20 on the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded and sank, killing 11 men and sending nearly 5 million barrels of crude into the Gulf.

Tensions between Dykes’ team and officials at the federal agency’s Washington headquarters were on the rise during a long delay in the release of the report, according to a Sept. 13 story in the Washington Post. The investigative report missed two deadlines, raising speculation about battles over the report’s wording.

President Barack Obama’s Oil Spill Commission came up with significantly different findings about the cause of the spill than the Coast Guard-Interior report that was finally released last week. The presidential commission, with no subpoena power, determined the root causes of the spill were systemic and industry-wide, something that some experts disagreed with. By contrast, the Coast Guard-Interior report, the official accident investigation based on months of sworn testimony and subpoenaed records, placed the blame for key causes of the explosion squarely at BP’s feet.

The Oil Spill Commission’s findings in January helped justify the administration’s deepwater drilling moratorium and cautious approach to resuming drilling activity under new permitting standards. The industry has long argued that a slowdown in drilling can’t be justified if the causes of the Deepwater Horizon incident are specific to BP’s management decisions.

Hastings said he notified the Interior Department and the Coast Guard that he “expects” the two chairmen of the investigative team, Dykes and Coast Guard Capt. Hung Nguyen, to be available to testify at a rescheduled hearing Oct. 6.
Dykes and a spokesman from Chevron did not comment late Thursday.

*******
David Hammer can be reached at dhammer@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3322.

Special thanks to Richard Charter